


A matter of trust

by thyandra



Series: Two-years Anniversary Fanfiction Giveaway [1]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul, Tokyo Ghoul:re
Genre: Also called: that one fic where everyone's lying and Kaneki's sick of it, Alternate Universe, Angst, Betrayal, Emotional Manipulation, Future Fic, Gen, Hide is a Washuu in this one, M/M, Manipulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-18 00:35:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9354986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thyandra/pseuds/thyandra
Summary: Revolutions were not a way for people to change heart: hearts needed to change first, for a revolution to happen, and his had been ready for a while now.He trusted that nothing - or no one - would be able to stop him at this point.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This work can be read both as a genfic or a romantic one. It's your choice, really.  
> This was the first time I wrote both Furuta and Uta, so please feel free to give me advices on how to improve their characterization. I hope that I didn't butcher it too much.  
> This fic was written as a fill in to a prompt (see below) asking me to write Hide and Kaneki as enemies. I took some liberties to make it fit with my understanding of how such a plot would play out and how it would affect what we know of the characters’ dynamics. Hope this doesn't feel too awkward.
> 
> Comments of any kind are always appreciated! o/

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Are we really going through with this then?” Amon’s clear voice cut through the tense silence of the room, the only one daring enough to address what undoubtedly was on everyone’s mind. Kaneki looked at him, properly looked at him for what felt like the first time.

 _Are we really going to change the world_ , was what he meant. He felt more than saw the mood of the entire room suddenly change to a much somber one, as each one of them pondered on their own the answer to that unspoken question.

Kaneki, though, only smiled. “ _I_ am,” he confirmed all the same, because he knew that that was all the resolution they needed to go forward. He let his gaze linger on every single one of the occupants of the room, weighting the resolve shining in their eyes, the hesitance in their avoided gazes and thoughtful stances, and the fear for the unknown lurking in the stiffness of their shoulders. And yet feeling their yearning, the ache for a change that made them strive for something different, for something worth all the disillusion and the heartache everyone had paid in blood over the death of their naiveté and childlike innocence.

He let his gaze sweep over each one of them, giving them time to consider that thought. Some of them nodded. A few scoffed. Others just couldn’t find the same optimism in themselves, but were willing to fight for it all the same. Kaneki was okay with that. Revolutions were not a way for people to change heart: hearts needed to change first, for a revolution to happen, and his had been ready for a while now.

He trusted that nothing - or no one - would be able to stop him at this point.

 

***

 

Chaos was still breaking loose downstairs, where he’d left the core of the battle still unfolding. If he sharpened his senses, he could still hear the maddening mantra of a human’s heart beating its hurried dance against their ribcage, spiraling in a fast-paced thrumming before a final blow, a stifled gasp preceding a deafening silence.

To some extent, he knew it was all in his head. That it was just the result of an overzealous brain striving to assign as much blame to itself as humanly possible.

Maybe that was his curse. It was humanly impossible to be gifted with such a big heart and to feel this much, and yet having destiny repeatedly choosing him as leader for its ploys, someone that by definition was not supposed to take feelings as close to his heart as he wanted to.

“What will your breaking point be this time around?” Nishio had asked, not unkindly, a sympathetic smile on his sardonic lips, before they left for their revolutionary, idealistic folly of theirs. No one had dared call it suicidal. That term, although not incorrect, brought back too many unpleasant memories, and too many unspoken tensions yet to address. “You know I’d follow you anywhere but to hell, Kaneki. Just tell me that’s not where you’re headed and I’ll believe you.”

Kaneki had promised.

 

***

 

The worst part - Kaneki had no way to realize as he made his way to where he knew Furuta was waiting for him, in the Chairman’s office - was that the answer to that question was not one Kaneki had any control over.

***

“My, my, if that isn’t an unexpected visit!” an unappropriately cheerful voice said just as Kaneki closed the door behind himself.

“You were waiting for me.”

An eerie, mocking laugh resounded through the otherwise still air of the CCG office, and Furuta made himself more comfortable on his stolen seat, crossing his ankles over the polished surface of the mahogany desk and looking at his nails with a well-rehearsed air of self-assumed dominance. “Yes, I was. You made me wait quite a while. I guess old habits die hard, uh, Kaneki-kun? A birdie told me that’s a flaw of yours.” He paused in his examination of his pristine fingers and gave him a saccharine smile. “I believe he was quite familiar with you. Hideyoshi was his name. Childhood friend, I understand? How sweet and _convenient_!”

Kaneki sucked in a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “What about him?” he asked, in a clipped tone. Suddenly, the temperature in the room dropped, and with it the pleasant mask Furuta had been wearing, instead replaced by a much more feral one. “What has this to do with Hide?”

“Oh, you mean you don’t know?” he asked, by all means looking like he’d expected his cluelessness. He leisurely shifted on his seat until his legs were no longer resting on the desk, leaning his elbows there to cup his chin in his hands instead. “He’s alive.”

 _Liar_.

“He is. Who do you think had enough intel to play a role in Washuu Yoshitoki’s death?” He smiled once again. “And there’s more! He’s been acting behind your back all this while. Judging by that look on your face, he didn’t bother letting you in on any of his plans of having us battle until we kill each other, did he?”

“You’re lying.”

“Am I?”

“I have no reason to believe anything your devious mouth comes up with,” Kaneki spat, his face darkening and his jaw tensing as he summoned his kagune. Four tentacles curled their way around the right side of his body, pointing menacingly in his opponent’s directions, already aiming to end this conversation short.

“So what, you’re just going to kill me like that, boss? Huh… I was wishing we’d have a long and nice chat instead, for old times sa-”

He was cut off by a kagune limb rapidly approaching his face, and was forced to duck to avoid the blow. “That’s too bad, Kaneki!” he exclaimed, backing down a few steps and holding his forehead with one gloved hand, wiping away the blood from a shallow cut over his eye that was already sealing itself shut. When his hand came down, he was sporting a kakugan eye. “Really really bad. You have a terrible attention span. So how about this,” he negotiated, spreading his arms wide while he let a manic grin twist his features, just as Kaneki rushed forward for another blow. He ducked down again last minute, then took out his kagune in one, explosive motion and impaled him.

Kaneki coughed up blood, but didn’t let that stop him. He tried to push his legs in a chokehold against Furuta’s neck to reverse their positions, but Furuta predicted that move and exploited Kaneki’s momentum to grab his ankle, twist it, and send him crashing down on the table, which shattered in a million wooden pieces and made his vision wobble from the pain of the impact for just a split second too long.

Furuta was on him in a minute, pinning him down with his weight, a foot on his throat to keep him from speaking.

“How about you listen to grown ups talking, before you kick up a fuss like a spoiled brat? Don’t get me wrong. It’s much too convenient for me to just kill you right here and now,” he purred, pressing down further on his windpipe and making Kaneki’s vision swim once again. “You even went as far as presenting yourself at my doorstep wrapped in a red ribbon! You really thought you would go through with this, didn’t you? Aw, such idiocy is so poetic!”

Kaneki spat on his shoe, refusing to lose consciousness and let him win that easily, but Furuta just gave him a pitying look.

“But I won’t. Unfortunately, that little fox has become a nuisance to me, too.” he said, and then released Kaneki all at once, wiping his shoe on Kaneki’s jacket. “So why don’t you clean after your own collateral damages, King-kun? You wouldn’t want for your throne to be usurped, would you?”

Kaneki wheezed, sucking in as much air as possible, massaging his throat. “Y-you’re… you’re lying,” he insisted, gasping heavily, when his throat stopped feeling so scratchy. “Hide didn’t do any of that. He _died_ to _save_ me.”

“Doesn’t that sound romantic,” Furuta mused, looking away, as if in thought. “I must admit it’s the perfect cover. No one would suspect him of being a Washuu bastard that way. And a Clown on top of that, don’t you agree?” He turned back to Kaneki, deactivating his kakugan. “And yet that’s exactly what he is. It’s so hypocritical of you to stick your fingers in my businesses, while you idolize _him_. Aren’t we the same, Kaneki-kun?”

“What are you saying,” Kaneki managed, staring at him, uncomprehending the reality in front of his face if not as a terribly put-together lie. “Hide was human. His family was, too. I met them. They were good people.”

“Oh, I bet they were. But now you’re just grasping at straws, aren’t ya? You wouldn’t need to do that if you really thought that wasn’t a possibility,” Furuta sneered. “Say, have you ever wondered why he never opened up about the six years you spent apart when you two had yet to meet?”

Kaneki was about to retort, but Furuta was not done.

“Ever wondered where he was even transferring from? Or why he never trusted adults?” He counted on his fingers. “I bet you never asked, did you… Say, my dear Kaneki-kun,” he paused to tap his index finger to his chin, savouring his last blow. “Did you ever stop to consider _why_ he was so okay with you turning into a _monster_?”

Kaneki couldn’t bring himself to speak. He struggled and struggled to hold on to his disbelief, knowing it _had_ to be a lie, but failing to protest it all the same.

“Your dear childhood friend was already planning for this world to burn, when you conveniently turned into an ally he could exploit. And so he set you up for a stage.”

 _No_ , he weakly thought. _That’s not true._

 _It cannot be true_. _I know it’s not._ _Hide would never betray me._

Unknowingly, as he struggled to refute that very idea and desperately clung to reason, his heart, where emotions lay uncontrolled, was already starting to consider it.

That was the curse of a heart too big for his own sake, and the reason why he couldn’t be a leader. Hell wasn’t a place an army could follow you to. Nishio had been right.

 _That_ was his final breaking point.

 

***

 

“Leave it!” Nishio shouted, his voice coming muffled both from the mask covering his face and the limp corpse of the CCG investigator slumped on his shoulder by the momentum of her fall. “Get Kaneki and RUN!”

“But A-aniki is…”

“We are overpowered!” Miza’s voice helpfully chimed in, “In a minute this place will be full of Clowns _and_ Doves! Leave him to me! Get cover!”

A whimper, then a deafening thump. Just as panic was about to break loose again, the first explosions could be heard outside. Everyone paled.

“Retreat!” Amon shouted over the both of them. “Ayato, Nishiki, with me. The rest of you, get back to the base! NOW!”

 

***

 

Kaneki didn’t remember the retreat. He didn’t remember his surroundings changing at all, and for a moment he was confused at the lack of checkered tiles on the floor, and at the pallid, dying light on his nightstand that made long shadows stretch from the bookshelves adjacent to the wall. He blinked.

“What happened up there?” was all Amon asked with the kind of beat up, tired air that had little to do with the physical fatigue of the recent battle. He might’ve sounded almost defeated, if Kaneki hadn’t gotten a glimpse of a still raging fire in his distant, gloomy eyes. Even then, there was a strain on his face that spoke of how much he was holding back on his true feelings on what had just happened, retaining an aura of collected maturity. He wasn’t going to address his disappointment, or his anger at having their comrades’ life being put into danger for no actual purpose beside that of coming back to the starting point with a bigger baggage of losses on their backs.

Kaneki got up and retrieved his coat as an answer. He was going to get the truth. 

 

***

 

He entered HySy with a feeling of deja-vu twisting his gut. He remembered coming to this very place feeling the same way about his life not too many years ago, and distantly thought that he’d walked back into another loop.

Was he ever going to break history’s cycle or would he be forever left standing trapped in its endless, meaningless spinning, fruitlessly fighting against the tide?

Kaneki didn’t know if that was even possible, given his precedents.

“Uta,” he called, once he was inside.

“Hey,” said person greeted from behind his working desk without looking up, waving some sort of cutting tool in his general direction. “What brings you here, Kaneki-kun? I wasn’t expecting a visit.”

“I was wishing you could tell me about Hide,” Kaneki cut straight to the point. He was past the point of pretending everything was alright. “He came after you, didn’t he? He asked you to send that book on Christmas. What else did he ask?”

Uta’s hands stopped whatever they were doing, and their owner finally looked at him, abandoning his task and setting his tools on the table to turn in his direction. “He did. He was quite the sharp boy, wasn’t he?” he answered with a curious smile. “Although his appearance might suggest otherwise. I did like his fashion sense, though. It was cute.”

Kaneki’s gaze hardened. “Uta,” he said again, uttering the other’s name as a warning. He wasn’t here for the small talk.

Uta seemed to understand this and stood up to put a ‘closed’ sign on the door and lead the way to a backroom, gesturing to a few chairs. Kaneki followed.

Once they were seated, Uta gave him an indecipherable look. “So, what’s with the sudden interest?”

“He survived the sewers… incident and is now in hiding,” Kaneki started, then glanced at the other. “He has allies on his side that made that possible. That would be your crew.”

Uta tilted his head. “And you want me to explain our connection.”

Kaneki nodded.

“Mh-mh. I don’t know much myself,” he said neutrally. “I just make masks for the customers I happen to find amusing.” His gaze became curious. “Why did you come to me, Kaneki?”

Kaneki remained quiet for a moment, weighing how to respond. “I trust you to tell me a less sugar-coated version of the truth,” he finally chose to say. It wasn’t like he trusted Uta, per se. Once, he might have. Now, he felt like the man was playing a high-risk roulette, constantly jumping between black and red, blurring into gray territory. It was a gamble, betting on it, but Kaneki felt like the situation called for him to follow its spinning.

It _circled and circled and circled_ , this pathetic life of his, and yet here he was, still in the middle of it, how fitting…

It seemed like Uta had accepted that answer, though, because he only gazed at him curiously. “You know I don’t make it a point to reveal confidential information about my patrons… But you’re a special customer,” he mused with a pensive air that revealed nothing about his real thoughts, “So, I can tell you a bit. I wouldn’t really call us a crew. I already told Ren that I don’t know much about the boss… Hide-kun, too, was only in here for other reasons. For the big picture.”

“What do you mean,” Kaneki asked. “What’s the big picture?”

“Can’t you tell?” Uta seemed amused, but his voice hadn’t changed from his usual smooth baritone, “Revolution,” he explained, pointing at him. “You weren’t the only reason why he joined the Doves. He was also searching for something. Information, for sure. Maybe even a back up plan.”

“What for?”

“I can’t know for sure,” Uta shrugged. “He was pretty hard to read. But Kaneki,” and here he smiled again, pressing a finger on the skin under one of his eyes. “You’re missing the obvious. He was human, wasn’t he? Fully human. How can that be possible, coming from a Washuu lineage? That’s curious, isn’t it?”

That gave Kaneki pause for thought. “Itori once told me that interspecies breeding was only likely to give birth to half ghouls.” He thought of Arima, and felt his heart squeeze. Then he realized: “That’s only a third of the truth, isn’t it?”

“You’re pretty bright yourself,” Uta commented airily.

“You know where he’s hiding, don’t you?” Kaneki asked somberly, a indecipherable look in his eyes. He got to his feet. “Can you put me into contact with him?”

“I could,” Uta said with that placid, unreadable air around him again. “But what will you do once you meet him again, Kaneki-kun?”

Kaneki remained quiet for a long while, considering.

“Ask him the same question,” he finally decided.

 

***

 

“Kaneki,” a familiar but long forgotten voice greeted. “Long time no see.”

A broad back turned just as Kaneki shouldered his way past the lock of that door, and the eyes of a ghost stared right into his. Kaneki swallowed.

What felt like a long, tense silence stretched before any of them even moved, and it took even longer for Kaneki to find it in him to respond to the greeting. “Hide,” he finally replied in a small voice, as if tasting the familiarity of that name it in his mouth, like he couldn’t yet believe in the reality of the person standing in front of his eyes. That seemed to break the spell, and both their shoulders sagged, as though finally admitting to the weight holding them down.

The ghost glanced at his door. “You came alone,” he observed neutrally, and his sharp eyes searched his face, his gaze becoming discerning. He dropped a file he had been reading on a nearby table covered in dried-looking coffee rings, where even more folders lay scattered in disorganized piles, along with several empty, unwashed coffee mugs. He sighed heavily, as though he’d come to a conclusion. “This isn’t how I expected to meet again,” the ghost admitted, sheepishly scratching his cheek just like Hide used to.

Kaneki didn’t reply, instead bridging the distance between them, until he was facing the physical condensation of one day too many of painful mourning, as if trying to make sense of it. “That’s fine,” Kaneki said shakily before he could stop himself. “I wasn’t expecting to meet you again at all.”

Why did he feel so choked?

Why did Hide look so _guilty_ , as he avoided his gaze? Why wasn’t he saying anything to _that_?

A single tear fell from Kaneki’s lashes, falling to the ground. That seemed to alarm Hide, for some reason, as though he hadn’t until then realized how that pointless, painful grief had weighed on Kaneki’s frail conscience, and just how much it had shaped Kaneki’s choices up until then. And so he rushed to say an _‘I’m sorry’_ that didn’t quite cover the extent of the bleeding Kaneki could feel on the left side of his chest.

“Why?” Kaneki asked, painfully neutral.

He didn’t know what he meant by that.

 _Why_ waiting so long?

 _Why_ keeping me in the dark, perhaps?

Maybe, _why_ do I feel like I don’t know you anymore?

Or even, _Why leaving my side at all?_

He didn’t know which question felt more urgent. And so he was left hanging there, pain and betrayal at not being trusted and _grief_ and _anger_ and sadness and something else twirling and twirling in his stomach until he could no longer make sense of his feelings anymore, and instead pressed with a kind of fervor not unlike desperation: “Hide, _why_?”

Hide couldn’t look at him when he said, “I was trying to save your life.”

The fight left Kaneki at that reply. “You chose to let me believe I had killed my best friend,” he corrected, his tone thousand-years old all of a sudden, his face morphing into a mask, trying not to feel anything at that, and ultimately failing.

Hah. _To think that I would’ve trusted you with mine_ , he thought, and dimly registered Hide’s shoulders tense again, and his face darken just before he took it in his hands.

“No,” Hide denied, “I chose to let you believe I wasn’t such a coward.” Kaneki almost expected for his voice to waver, but it didn’t. It felt even worse, that way. It was like he was only speaking a truth he’d long since come to terms with. “I have always been that selfish. You just never noticed, and I never bothered to correct you,” Hide laughed humorlessly, and dropped his hands.

When Kaneki searched his eyes, he saw them harden with a sort of determination really unlike the cheerful, airhead friend he’d always thought of knowing as well as himself. There was a wetness to them though, like he was suppressing the tears from falling.

“Kaneki, buddy. Listen. I wish we didn’t have to meet like this. I wish we could’ve just hugged it out in that coffee shop of yours while a pretty waitress poured me a coup. But something got in the way of that amazing picture, I bet you can recall,” he smiled bitterly and with a touch of self-deprecation, and it was Kaneki’s turn to look away, recognizing the jab for what it was.

He’d been the first one to avoid a confrontation, hadn’t he?

“The point is,” Hide resumed, watching the mess on his table, “I spent the last four years trying to find a way to work this mess out. I didn’t save you to waste your chance. The Washuu, the Clowns, even you… You’ve got it all wrong.”

“You… Saved me to set me up against Arima, didn’t you?” Kaneki suddenly realized in an horrified gasp, taking a few steps away, and couldn’t stop the shock from showing on his face. “You _knew_ he would spare me if I proved strong enough. That’s why you begged me to fight to the best of my abilities.”

It hadn’t been a question, but he saw Hide nod gravely, if guiltily.

“You knew I would have to fight him again, eventually,” Kaneki continued in a whisper. “That’s why you gave me a clue about my past. You _wanted_ for me to remember,” he put the puzzle pieces together, remembering the book. “You realized that was the purpose of saving me. Taking his place.”

Hide nodded again, his eyes downcast. “I knew you could do it. You were the only one who could.” However briefly, Kaneki noticed the flicker of pain in his eyes, before Hide willed it away. It wasn’t enough to amend the sting of having to look at him like an enemy, after believing he was an ally for his whole life time.

“It was true, then.” Kaneki realized, and felt the ghost of Furuta’s mocking laugh making fun of his naivety. Hide had never been on his side. He’d always looked out for his own interest, hadn’t he? “It was just as Furuta said,” he whispered in a tiny, shocked voice.

“Kaneki,” Hide said tiredly, staring at a wall instead of meeting his gaze. “Why are you here?”

Kaneki wasn’t sure anymore.

What had he expected from this encounter?

Hide sighed. “Would you still have gone through with your plans of revolution, if you knew what you know right now?”

He didn’t know.

“That’s what I thought,” Hide said resignedly. “I wasn’t ready for you to hate me just yet. And I needed for you to stay focused just a little bit longer. Your heart was in the right place, Kaneki. Your actions just didn’t follow.”

His head was pounding, the ground falling from beneath his feet as he watched on and on without feeling anything at all past the cold rapidly numbing all of his muscles, past the sense of betrayal that slowly enveloped him in its grasp, suppressing any rationality, any strategy, any dignity. He’d been such a fool. Hide was only using him, wasn’t he?

“I regret it, for what it’s worth,” Hide admitted. “I really thought that manipulating you was the lesser of two evils. It saved your life, didn’t it? That must have made it worth it, or so I thought.”

Kaneki wasn’t sure he was listening anymore. His head felt fuzzy, like his brain had been enveloped in a layer of cotton wool, shielding him from any outside source of noise.

“No,” Kaneki denied, not listening. “This can’t be true.” He slowly took his head in his hands, his fingers gripping the roots of his white hair.

“I’m sorry, Kaneki. I really am. I know I betrayed your trust, but I’m not your enemy, no matter what they told you about me.”

Kaneki couldn’t look at the agony on his face, knowing it had to be fake. He couldn’t make sense of his words, knowing they had to be a lie. “How can you say that, when you can’t even look me in the eye?” he asked. He didn’t feel anything when he saw Hide flinch like he’d been slapped.

“Kaneki, you have to believe me,” he insisted, and when he finally raised his gaze to meet Kaneki’s, the tears shining in his eyes, almost falling, seemed real enough. Not that Kaneki believed them a single bit. “You were never _my_ enemy,” he said, like a really good actor. “Shit. I never even wanted to loose you, can’t you tell?”

He was doing it again, wasn’t he? The manipulation.

He was talking about his feelings like Kaneki was the one supposed to empathize. Like Kaneki’s own feelings didn’t matter.

And maybe they really didn’t matter, because he felt so numb. _So_ , so numb.

How could someone stop feeling?

He really wanted to know.

“Who was I, to you?” he whispered brokenly, too soft for Hide to hear. He fell to his knees. “Who? Who was I?” Before he knew it, four massive kagune limbs had sprouted from his back, tearing his clothes in their wake and hovering menacingly around his crouched low form, nesting him.

“ _who, who_ ,” parroted one of their mouths.

“ _who am i_ ,” echoed another, as Kaneki tried to breathe, and failed, hiccuping, panting in his haste to recontrol his focus.

“ _or.. ort it…_ ”

“ _dead,_ ”

“ _woo, whooo, who are you_ ”

“ _eagg… head. egg_ ”

“ _dead_ ”

“ _DEaTH_ ”

 _That’s right,_ Kaneki thought, still panting. _Dead. Hide is dead. This is a lie_.

The kagune limbs were now swinging rapidly around the room, bending and twisting of their own will and wreaking havoc with its contents, as Hide hurried to find shelter behind a broken piece of furniture. “Kaneki, stop it! There’s no need to resort to this!”

Kaneki wasn’t listening anymore, his ears too full of static.

“ _Ken_ , please, I really don’t want to fight you,” Hide begged, and Kaneki looked and looked with a sort of distant, numb fascination his mask of composure falling apart before his eyes. Alert, his eyes followed Hide moving to the centre of the room, like he was expecting an attack from him any moment now.

It didn’t come.

Instead, he saw Hide swallow thickly before planting his feet in a determined manner and open his arms wide.

Posing a wider target.

_What was he doing?_

“I’ll explain everything,” Hide said, closing his eyes with a pained expression. “But you have to listen closely, yeah, buddy?”

His voice shook with what was undoubtedly a mind-numbing fear, but he kept his eyes stubbornly closed.

“T-try not to k-kill me before I’m finished talking, okay?” he still tried to joke, but the effect was ruined by how tense the line of his shoulders was.

Kaneki blinked.

 _Kill_ him?

Hide thought he wanted to kill him?

“I am a Washuu,” Hide interrupted his thoughts. “At least by blood. You know of Furuta, don’t you? I too come from a branch family, and I was the first child to ever be born in their lineage with full human blood. That made me special for a lot of reasons, apparently.“

Kaneki remained silent, appraising. He had guessed as much. But it still didn’t explain why they were facing each other on opposite ends of a room, or why Hide was still standing with his arms spread wide like he expected a blow.

“What I’m sure your informants haven’t told you is that I was as much as a pawn as Arima Kishou, in their eyes,” Hide explained bitterly, and Kaneki flinched as he let that sink in. What did he mean by that?

“A pawn?”

Hide finally opened his eyes to stare right into his. “I was supposed to be shaped into the perfect soldier to guide and protect the interests of the Washuu empire,” he explained. There was a sincerity and an urgency in his irises Kaneki hadn’t quite expected, and couldn’t fully understand. “The only reason why that didn’t happen was because someone had the conscience of pitying me, and hid me from their sight, completely rewriting my identity.”

“They… Hid you?”

Hide nodded gravely, before dropping his arms at his sides. “So instead, I met you,” he said, the beginning of a smile starting to stretch his lips for the first time that day, melting the tension in his body until what was left was a more solid impression of a Hide he might have once known. “That should answer your question from before. You’re Kaneki. Just Kaneki, my best friend. That’s who you are to me. I’ll understand if you won’t trust anything else, or if you… If you’ll _hate_ me, or well, I’ll try to, but,” he swallowed thickly, cutting himself off. “I know I’m in no position to make demands, but at least trust _that_ , okay? You’re my best friend,” he repeated with such force and seriousness Kaneki couldn’t appeal to manipulation anymore. This was the truth, wasn’t it?

He’d been genuine about that last statement.

The knot in Kaneki’s stomach tangled even further, as he let that sink in. The silence stretched on, before Hide broke it again, his gaze downcast.

“You’ve always been since grade school. They would have taken even that from me. I don’t even know who would I be, if they had. Can you really resent me for hating it?”

And the thing was, Kaneki really couldn’t.

He hadn’t noticed the tears sliding down his cheeks until Hide’s eyes grew wide in alarm, and so he wiped them with a sleeve, instead of answering.

Maybe it was another trick, or maybe he’d just missed Hide’s constant presence at his side, even when he wasn’t there, because the thought alone of having someone like him to return to had been enough to keep him going even in his direst hours. Perhaps he just ached to find back a piece of himself he thought he’d lost forever that night in the sewers, his humanity, or a reason to believe that he mattered as much to Hide as Hide mattered to him, and that he’d never have to look at him as yet another enemy.

The thing was, Kaneki probably never could. That was a decision he’d taken long before realizing it, and one he couldn’t bring himself to regret, not even when it meant having to rebuild the trust he once had for Hide brick by brick, until it went back to what they once had.

Maybe that was his reason to live; having a heart too big for his own good, and believing in others above himself, trusting them to keep him grounded in turn.

He finally let his kagune retreat to his back, and glanced at Hide from behind his bangs, still crouched low.

“I don’t know if I can believe you, yet,” he said, because he felt that Hide needed the honesty. “And I can’t promise that I ever will. Not like before.”

Hide didn’t say anything to that, but nodded understandingly. Kaneki hadn’t expected him to.

“But I’m willing to listen,” he concluded, and Hide nodded again, before slumping on the ground and looking around the destruction in his living room.

“This doesn’t feel real,” he admitted. “Talking to you like this again, I mean.”

Kaneki had to agree, his head still feeling woozy and his thoughts still jumbled in thousands of knots made up of different feelings he had yet to categorize, but felt no pressure to do so. Staying in a room together with a ghost had never before felt different from the stuff of his frequent nightmares, but this time it did, and he was still riding the tide of that intoxication.

Had his life finally exhausted its spins?

Maybe.

“So, what was so wrong with my ruling as a King?” Kaneki asked, suddenly feeling exhausted, and Hide glanced at him in surprise, before sighing deeply.

“Really, Kaneki?,” he exclaimed, a mix between exasperated and playful, a tone that bordered on nostalgic. It really had been a long while since anything had sounded normal for Kaneki, hadn’t it? “You founded a Anti-Human division,” he deadpanned with his most unimpressed face. “Were you serious about that one? Actually, one hundred percent _I-thought-about-this-one-carefully_ serious?”

Kaneki chuckled, and that, too, felt rusty, as though he hadn’t in a while. “Maybe it was a bit rough around the hedges,” he conceded. “I was acting on desperation and heartbreak. Not my brightest idea.”

Hide hummed, lost in thought for a moment, and then dropped the playful act for a much more somber topic. “I won’t waste this chance. I want to make this communication thing work this time.”

Kaneki turned to look at him.

“Are we really gonna try to make this work again? I need to know, buddy.”

He almost sounded scared.

That was okay, Kaneki thought. _I am terrified of fucking it up, too._

So maybe he still didn’t know what kind of twist the future would have him face next, and maybe this wouldn’t be the last of its spins. But this time, Kaneki mused with a renewed confidence in his worn down face, he knew what the real answer to that question should have been.

He smiled.

“ _We_ are,” he confirmed.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my tumblr [here](http://bloodycarnations.tumblr.com/post/155180922524/plzzzzzz-write-a-fic-on-some-situation-where-hide).  
> (Amon was only in here because of my bias, of course. Eheh).


End file.
